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Project Starline expands testing through an early access program
- mmastrac 4y agoI had forgotten about this. Discussion from last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27199330 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27199330
- _ea1k 4y ago[flagged]
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- reaperducer 4y agoI'm ok with the rebranding part. "Starline" sounds like a space Titanic. This is more like a big TV you can sit close to and other people in the room who move slowly from left to right will be able to see a parallax effect on the screen.
- napolux 4y ago
- nitrixion 4y agoMy perspective is that if it doesn't serve ads it likely doesn't have a future at Google. I would be interested in playing around with this tech, but I wouldn't integrate it into my business or any other part of my life.
- amf12 4y ago> My perspective is that if it doesn't serve ads it likely doesn't have a future at Google. It could be a product under Workspaces. Google Meet is widely used and with no advertisements.
- macrolime 4y agoHopefully it would support some peer-to-peer protocol so that when Google cancels it, it won't just stopping working.
- twobitshifter 4y agoThis is my favorite Google project. I hope it becomes something that we all can use. To me, at least, this is more useful than meeting in vr with no legs.
- bhaney 4y agoNot a very high bar there
- twobitshifter 4y agoThe point being competitors are pouring billions into VR meetings, but this project at google is getting little attention.
- FeistySkink 4y agoGoogle R&D projects don't have the longevity reputation, so they might not deserve attention.
- alphabetting 4y agoGoogle AI R&D projects seem to do well. The transformer which Google AI released is the basis of a lot of modern ML projects
- hn_throwaway_99 4y agoMy questions are: 1. Does it only support 1-on-1 meetings (the demos only show 1-1)? I think that's still useful, but note probably 90%+ of my online meetings have at least 3 people. 2. Sounds like the expense means it will only be installed in offices, not people's homes. Which, again, is still useful as long as it hits the 3rd bullet point. 3. Does everyone need to be on a Starline device to participate? I'd expect/hope to get "graceful degredation" in functionality for folks who were just joining from, say, their laptop at home.
- a-dub 4y ago
- FeistySkink 4y agoI'm struggling to believe Google will see this through beyond a tech demo. And who's the target audience? I mean, what would a unit's cost be? Looks like another cool tech Google won't be able to productize successfully. Edit: I was super excited for Soli way back when, but so far haven't see any smart clothes they were imagining in the early days.
- xnx 4y agoSoli did seem cool. Wasn't Jacquard the smart clothing technology? Surprisingly, I think there are some products: https://atap.google.com/jacquard/products/ https://atap.google.com/jacquard/products/
- FeistySkink 4y agoI couldn't find either jackets for sale (broken links), and the promo videos were rather underwhelming. Seems like a smart watch can already do all of these, albeit in a less "cool" manner, and it's not tied to a piece of clothing. I was imagining something more cyberpunk, and not just an input device. Perhaps, that goes beyond what Soli tries to achieve. Edit: I can imagine more interesting use cases where you can't use precise input, for example when wearing gloves (construction, space suite, etc.).
- kaycebasques 4y agoNest is doing some cool stuff with Soli on their hubs to monitor sleep patterns: https://www.xda-developers.com/google-nest-hub-soli-motion https://www.xda-developers.com/google-nest-hub-soli-motion Disclosure: I work on Fuchsia which is now the OS for some of the Nest hubs (https://9to5google.com/2022/06/23/google-fuchsia-nest-hub-max/ https://9to5google.com/2022/06/23/google-fuchsia-nest-hub-ma...)
- hammock 4y agoCan I say that a Magic Window in my office sounds 1000x better than a magic headset that I have to wear (Meta Quest 2)
- 4y ago
- account-5 4y agoI have definitely been wrong about technology before, prime example was camera phones when the first appeared; couldn't for the life of me see the point. With that caveat, I don't get how this makes employees/customers/clients more engaged/productive or form rapport/have better experiences. Like the Facebook thing I'm definitely not using anything that has to be this massively invasive (eye tracking, facial recognition, etc) from an advert company.
- spoonjim 4y agoThe desire to connect across distance is very real. Grandparents want to see their grandkids, customers want to see their vendors, friends want to see each other.
- Someone1234 4y agoIndeed. And the market has a lot of products that already attempt to address that. Aside from being physically bigger and therefore more expensive, what is the value-add to this for those scenarios? We'd all love a 65" window to stay in touch with loved ones, but the price is the problem not the tech. This doesn't attempt to address the economics, and to be honest I'm not sure what is new or interesting about Starline?
- kevinventullo 4y agoIt’s not just a screen, it projects different images to your eyeballs to give the illusion of depth.
- Someone1234 4y agoSo it is a screen you have to sit in an exact arch and that costs yet even more.
- kevinventullo 4y agoNo, the eyeball tracking means you can move around and get the depth perception as you move. It seems like potentially very cool technology, I don’t understand this negativity.
- xnx 4y agoI hope I get to try this at a WeWork sometime soon.
- johndfsgdgdfg 4y ago
- pb7 4y agoHow many times are you going to repost this on an article about Google? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33102761 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33102761
- Ensydr 4y agoBeing in New Zealand I remember the google balloon project, what happened to that?
- codyogden 4y agoProject Loon was killed last year.
- vl 4y agoIt flew away into stratosphere.
- Ensydr 4y agohahahaha
- jamesvnz 4y agoMy understanding is that it could be made to work, but Starlink came along and clearly solved the problem of delivering high speed internet to remote areas better.
- reportingsjr 4y agoLoon was shut down, but some of the technology is being elsewhere. (not surprising, this is how a lot of r&d projects go) Some of the laser communication link tech is being used in project taara.
- bibabaloo 4y agoWonder how the folks at https://tonari.no/ https://tonari.no/ feel about this.
- Tistron 4y agoIf I was writing short term sci-fi, I'd have Starbucks, or some such chain with omnipresence, have bookable meeting rooms with technology like that, so that we can go and have quality meetings across the world at affordable prices.
- heliostatic 4y agoI had the same thought--tonari seems to be doing fantastic work in this space. I hope this proves a market for them and accelerates interest.
- pedalpete 4y agoThey should feel pretty great about this. Google is making the market. Will Google eventually build a real product in this market? Possibly, but it is possible to compete with Google. Do they have differentiator against Google? Maybe, I don't know the space, but it's probably a positive for them more than a negative.
- buildbot 4y ago1. Echoing all the comments here, can’t see google keeping this around for 5+ years 2. I feel like the main thing holding back a normal video meeting or even voice call is latency - latency leads to the awkward pauses or interruptions that for me cause the most “connection friction”. If anyone here has talked on an actual landline recently, it feels qualitatively better than a teams voice call for example due to the decreased latency and ability to both talk at once. Solve this, and you solve 90% of the problem, imo
- bawolff 4y agoI think there has been some research suggesting that lack of eye contact (the camera is not where the person's face is) has a really large unconcious affect on how people interact.
- judge2020 4y agoApple fixed this[0] but I don’t personally use FaceTime much so I’d be interested to see if people find it creepy or better. 0: https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/how-to-use-eye-contact-feature-in-iphone-and-ipad/articleshow/91467852.cms https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/how-to-use-eye-cont...
- jefftk 4y agoLatency isn't actually that hard to fix: if both connections are wired (both internet and headphones / speakers) you can get round trip latency down to about 15ms which is good enough to feel immediate and on par with POTS. It's just a matter of getting your coworkers onto ethernet, and convincing them to give up their Bluetooth headphones...
- MauranKilom 4y ago> you can get round trip latency down to about 15ms (...if everyone is within about 1000 miles).
- 4y ago
- binkHN 4y agoThis reminds me of Cisco's Telepresence. Anyone know how this is different?
- binkHN 4y agoI think I just answered my own question via https://blog.google/technology/research/project-starline/ https://blog.google/technology/research/project-starline/. It appears some kind of “3D display” is being used.
- walrus01 4y ago> enterprise partners such as Salesforce, WeWork I see this as a negative and not a positive. I have very little to no desire to ever spend money with either of those or have involvement with things that they make extensive use of.
- dbbk 4y agoSo? They're talking about their employees testing it out internally. It has nothing to do with you.
- cardosof 4y ago
- a-dub 4y agoi love how all the people in the demo videos are excessively and unnaturally expressive in order to show off how it captures depth. would be neat to try, would be curious how much the effect holds up over time (vs flat video conferencing) as people get used to it. interesting technology regardless.
- a1371 4y agoThe cards are definitely stacked against this when it's at Google. Because of: 1. Google's solid track record of killing things because they didn't grow quickly, after a half hearted effort. Stadia being the latest example. 2. Google being pretty bad at cracking the corporate communication space. Teams and Zoom ate its lunch. 3. Google not having a strategy behind communication tools in general. Meet, Hangouts, Chat, Duo, Alo, ... already it's weird where this fits. 4. Google being bad at supporting new hardware gadgets. My Daydream VR came out 2 years before my Pixel, somehow these two things don't support each other. I wish they at least would sell their divisions instead of kill/hamper such moonshot products. This looks like the next Google Glass.
- matai_kolila 4y agoIt's a super fun thing to be the first person to comment about #1 on literally everything Google does, but it's silly and wrong to think that's a valid criticism. For every product Google kills, it's launched dozens of wildly successful products you've been taking for granted for over a decade in some cases: Gmail, search, Drive, Photos, Chromecast, Chrome, Books, Flights, Scholar, AdSense, Calendar, Docs, Sheets, Keep, Translate, Maps... Google can and does support dozens of good products, and pretending otherwise is getting tiresome. If your best criticism is, "I dunno if Google will support this long term" that, to me, means you couldn't come up with anything better to say, which means it's a pretty damn cool product.
- weeblewobble 4y agothank you. it's the definition of a middlebrow dismissal
- xani_ 4y ago> For every product Google kills, it's launched dozens of wildly successful products you've been taking for granted for over a decade in some cases: Gmail, search, Drive, Photos, Chromecast, Chrome, Books, Flights, Scholar, AdSense, Calendar, Docs, Sheets, Keep, Translate, Maps... More like for every 10 products they kill they maybe let one live... Have you not seen killed by google ? > Google can and does support dozens of good products, and pretending otherwise is getting tiresome. If your best criticism is, "I dunno if Google will support this long term" that, to me, means you couldn't come up with anything better to say, which means it's a pretty damn cool product. It's pretty fucking important to know that if you're going to splurge a bunch of money to put it in your offices. You're just being ignorant at that point.
- busymom0 4y ago
- TheRealPomax 4y ago
- jnwatson 4y agoIf this were from a startup, no one would be saying the same, but because it is Google, folks want to ride the bandwagon. Microsoft has cancelled thousands of products, but nobody says a thing. Yet the number of hardware products Google has cancelled you can count on 1 hand.
- KerrAvon 4y agoif you have a hand with 21 fingers https://killedbygoogle.com https://killedbygoogle.com Filter Graveyard List Hardware (21)
- terinjokes 4y agoIf we used the "Killed By Google" criteria for hardware by other tech companies it would be significantly longer than 21. Of the products that made it past a tech demo, most were simply superseded by other hardware products, and many continued to work after the "killed" date (and some continue to work to this day). As jsnell said in another comment on this article, the list is bad.
- jnwatson 4y agoThat list is so bad it is disingenuous. Because Google chooses to stop making a device doesn't mean it is "killed".
- TheRealPomax 4y agoMaybe because Google has made "create a thing and kill it off because it doesn't push the needle, instead of spinning it off to its own company" is their literal modus operandus? If a random startup had made this: cool! It might actually stay in business because pushing their needle doesn't require making at least 30 million a year from the get-go.
- countvonbalzac 4y ago
- judge2020 4y agoI'll add it to my calendar to let you know if you're correct :)
- ehmmmmmmmm 4y agoSomething I think which really needs to be discussed. Why do tech companies always put a token black person in their PR videos but yet their hiring doesn't reflect that?
- oh_sigh 4y agoBecause there aren't enough qualified black people to hire, but that doesn't mean that black people don't exist. Look at some harrowing stats on who takes the AP CS exam: https://www.edweek.org/leadership/still-no-african-americans-taking-the-ap-computer-science-exam-in-nine-states/2015/11 https://www.edweek.org/leadership/still-no-african-americans...
- ehmmmmmmmm 4y agoSure, but it also feels slightly pretentious. Is representation in PR what the community wants? Why not actually uplifting the community such that artifical representation isn't necessary?
- rrdharan 4y agoWhat makes you think that either a) they aren’t trying to do that too or b) that this isn’t a component in that? It’s not anymore unreasonable to conclude that representation in PR _is_ what the community wants than to decide it _isn’t_ and communities aren’t monoliths anyway.
- taeric 4y agoThis makes all of the interactions look like interrogations. What am I missing?
- Lammy 4y agoSame here, my first thought was that it looks like a prison visitation.
- pyrolistical 4y agoGenius. Sell this to prisons.
- intelVISA 4y agoPerfect for corporate 1:1s then.
- cpeterso 4y agoIt's not unlike documentary filmmaker Errol Morris's "Interrotron": > An Interrotron is a clever film making device used to create up-close, face-to-face interviews. The Interrotron makes it simple to create in-your-face, gritty interviews. It’s this eye-catching style that never fails to engage an audience. https://telepromptermirror.com/errol-morris-interrotron/ https://telepromptermirror.com/errol-morris-interrotron/
- andreilys 4y agoI expect this will be shut down a year after the people working on it get their promos.
- ggm 4y agoIf they've managed to embed the video collector at eye height or close, so the effect of looking at the screen is to be seen as looking at the other person, this is in itself useful. If it's still a non-eyeline camera and they do some adaptive smarts to make it "look" like eyeline I'd be interested how good that is. If they have leveraged peppers ghost and like techniques to make a volume appear to be "occupied" then it's possible this also helps with hinting to presence. I've seen some art displays which sort-of did this. It was remarkably pleasant to sit opposite people who you sort-of knew were not actually in the implied volume behind the screen. The influence of delay on perception of "there-ness" is huge. I would be interested how good this is at adjusting for unremovable lightspeed delay inter-continental. Not to over do it, it wouldn't surprise me if this works in SFO to NYC but works less well SFO to LHR or SFO to SIN. I tend to assume "applied ML" is marketing speak but its possible the investment in time to tune some net has made an FPGA cheap to deploy to do one job, and do it well, and over time be (re)tuned to do it better. This isn't welcome to new robot overlords, its just sensible use of technology to improve. I could see anything which does image processing like this also be applicable for people with persisting tic or tremor issues. It might help with stabilising image for their remote participation in online stuff. I totally prefer this kind of application of smarts, to what Meta are doing.
- peppertree 4y agoFaceTime does auto gaze correction.
- readams 4y agoThe experience is as if you're looking directly at a person sitting across from you. There is no camera offset.
- ggm 4y agoThe Q is "done how"
- TulliusCicero 4y agoIIRC depth sensors, you're not actually looking at the original image from a camera, they recreate the person as a 3D model.
- aerovistae 4y agoIt's weird how this seems really exciting and yet the fact that it's a google project leaves me assured it will go nowhere, and therefore it's hard to take much of an interest in. Same as that cool automated phone call AI they demo'd a few years ago. Cool, but not likely to go anywhere in Google's hands. Product-wise, have they succeeded with anything in the past 10+ years? Chrome is from before then. Android is from before then. Google Maps, Search, and Gmail are all from before then. I guess the Pixel was successful. Seems like everything else is incremental technical improvements of existing product lines.
- rrdharan 4y agoDo you consider Kubernetes and TensorFlow to be Google “products”, or not?
- raydiatian 4y agoGoogle-developed technologies, but not products.
- falcor84 4y agoLooks really interesting, and reminds me of the cool “Looking Glass” screens in the game Prey (2017) [0]. [0] https://prey.fandom.com/wiki/Looking_Glass https://prey.fandom.com/wiki/Looking_Glass
- neilv 4y agoCan it reskin me as Tom Cruise?
- readams 4y agoI've personally tried a prototype and it's actually pretty impressive. You get a fully-3D life-size person sitting across from you. The rendering is not 100% perfect, but it's close enough that you're not in any sort of uncanny valley. The main problem is that it's really a 1:1 thing.
- aamoscodes 4y agoDid you use it at home or in an office? The emphasis of hybrid work makes it seem like this is primarily for offices.
- quantumquetzal 4y agoEvery time a Google product release makes its way to this site, it seems as though many commenters don't read the article and instead attempt to "dunk on" Google for their history of cancelling projects, vying to express how they distrust Google because of their privacy invasiveness or their inability to commit or some anecdotal evidence dealing with support. Same with Meta products. It's an exhausting exercise to attempt to find good-faith discussion of the products being released. While I'm unsure of the market for Starline, I think it presents an interesting alternative to XR-based collaboration: why bother with trying to reinvent the entirety of reality or augment it, when we can insteas capitalize on existing technologies and eke every bit of computw out of them? Who's to say which methodology is 'correct"? The technology alone is impressive. Hopefully this can see wider adoption to find out where it fits in the technological landscape.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ok_dad 4y agoIt sounds like Google needs to work on their track record, methinks. Why should we talk about and venerate this tech if it's never going to have a chance due to probable cancellation? Can anyone inside or outside Google guarantee that the owner of this product isn't going to dump it as soon as it's ready for commercialization to start a new project for their career enhancement? I have not seen a single Google exec take on the hard question of "Why does Google cancel stuff so much? How can we trust you?" and answer it, or even try to answer it. All we have is their track record of shuttering products!! It's exhausting trying to have a good-faith discussion with someone you know is an unfaithful actor. We get all excited about some new stuff Google develops, then months or years later it evaporates with zero support and no warning.
- quantumquetzal 4y agoBy no means am I arguing the notion that their track record of supporting products (especially hardware) is good, especially when compared to other participants in the space. It is poor, I think most of us have heard that at least once by now. At the same time, nobody has to venerate anything in these threads either. Positive and negative discussion should be encouraged. But merely stating that "it's gonna be cancelled, place your bets" (as many of the comments at the bottom of this thread do) does not constitute meaningful or intellectually-stimulating conversation, and we as a community should strive to do better than that.
- spoonjim 4y agoThis is sad because this is a brilliant enterprise product from a company that has few of the fundamentals required to sell it into the enterprise.
- dbbk 4y agoThey sell Google Workspace pretty well.
- PostOnce 4y agoOn the bottom of the video clips, it says: "Not authorized by FCC rules. No sales or leases permitted until authorized." What is that about? I've never seen it before, and I've seen a lot of stuff. Are they required to print that by some rule I'm unfamiliar with?
- HWR_14 4y agoBefore electronics can be sold in the US, the go through testing to prove it doesn't create electromagnetic interference. Those rules are set by the FCC. Some uses (e.g. R&D prototypes) are exempted. This is Google's legal team covering their asses by making it clear these are prototypes. There's every reason to assume these will pass the tests, but there's no reason to do so until you have the hardware pretty locked down.
- PostOnce 4y agoYeah but if they're not currently for sale, and there's no pre-order button, then no need for a disclaimer? Why would you have to disclaim things that you aren't taking orders for? Hobby projects, prototypes, etc?
- HWR_14 4y agoBecause when you are Google-scale you have a big legal department whose job is to make sure that people obey the laws like this. I'm sure if it was a garage startup, no disclaimer would be there. But Google wants to make sure that they are protected by making it clear no employee can loan it to a friend, etc. And there are rules set up so when that label is no longer applied, then the appropriate people have signed off on it.
- PostOnce 4y agoAh. Thanks for taking the time to explain :)
- allisdust 4y agoWill they let people wfh after this? My guess is yes and with every bit of information tracked - what apparel people like to what kind people you like for match making. May be even what people are afraid of.
- Comevius 4y agoThis is amazing and would do wonders for adult entertainment as well.
- softwareoiu 4y ago
- joshxyz 4y ago20 bucks this will end up in google graveyard cemetery good tech though this is way more impressive, now all we need is some other company who will commit to it unlike google
- astrange 4y agoMost of the comments here are just complaining Google is going to cancel this, but I think Google should cancel this because it doesn't seem like a good product. They're not a hardware company and no matter how many people want a cool telepresence box, how many of those people want to pay Google employee prices for its maintenance? It seems like they came up with it for fun, but maybe they should just sell it to Cisco.
- rippercushions 4y agoBased on the comments here, the heavy lifting is done in software. If it takes off, I fully expect Google to start licensing it out the way they do much of their hardware (Chromebooks, Android, etc).
- astrange 4y agoChromebook and Android are general-purpose computers that can be used to go on the internet so you can see an ad. This appears to be a way of doing especially immersive video calls; I'm not sure what the ecosystem for it is, unless you believe in metaverses.
- rippercushions 4y agoLooks cool, but sad to see this is US only. I wonder if this is because regulations, latency requirements, or both?